Maintaining or improving vegetation condition or diversity are objectives of environmental water management common to wetlands across the Murray-Darling Basin. But what do we mean by an improved condition or diversity outcome and why do we care? The way we measure and assess condition and diversity outcomes is dependent on scale and the desired vegetation function. Here we conceptualise the need to consider vegetation responses across multiple scales of organisation (i.e. individual plants, populations, communities, landscapes/vegscapes) and multiple types of vegetation traits (e.g. compositional, structural and process). We also discuss the way in which interacting drivers may constrain the expression of vegetation traits. We provide examples of the way the conceptual framework may be applied to aid in the planning and assessment of vegetation outcomes at a range of scales and for a variety of functional outcomes.